Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic poses a serious global threat to human health. In China, the government immediately implemented lockdown measures to curb the spread of this virus. These measures severely affected transportation and industrial production across the country, resulting in a significant change in the concentration of air pollutants. In this study, the Euclidean distance method was used to select the most similar meteorological field during the COVID-19 lockdown period. Changes in the concentration of air pollutants in China were analyzed under similar meteorological background conditions. Results indicate that, compared with data from 2015–2019, air quality in China significantly improved; with the exception of ozone (O3), the concentration of major air pollutants declined. Compared with baseline conditions, the reduction of air pollutants in China from 25 January to 22 February 2020 (Period 2) was the most significant. In particular, NO2 decreased by 41.7% in the Yangtze River Delta. In Period 2, the reduction of air pollutants in areas other than Hubei gradually decreased, but the reduction of NO2 in Wuhan reached 61.92%, and the reduction of air pollutants in various regions after February 23 was significantly reduced. By excluding the influence of meteorological factors and calculating the contribution of human activities to atmospheric pollutants by linear fitting, in Period 2 the effect of artificial controls on NO2 in Wuhan attained 30.66%, and reached 48.17% from 23 February to 23 March (Period 3). Results from this investigation provides effective theoretical support for pollution prevention and control in China.
Highlights
Recent economic expansion and development in China has resulted in a rapid promotion of industrial production
Organization (WHO) report, more than 800,000 people die from air pollution each year, and particulate matter (PM) is the pollutant that has the greatest impact on human health [6]
Studies have found that a 10 μg·m−3 increase in PM2.5 is associated with an increase in respiratory mortality of 1.01% and a 1.04% increase in cardiovascular diseases, and the hospitalization rate for respiratory diseases and cardiovascular diseases increased by 0.48%
Summary
Recent economic expansion and development in China has resulted in a rapid promotion of industrial production. During the winter and spring, the difference in pollution between north and south China is obvious, especially during the heating period when a sharp increase in coal consumption results in a deterioration of air quality in the north [41,42,43]. Restrictions on people’s movement, the suspension of industrial and commercial production activities, and the postponement of schools played a significant role in controlling the spread of COVID-19 These lockdown measures caused the number of new cases to decline by 73.6% by the 16–30 days after lockdown [54]. In the UK, each increase of 1 m3 in the average PM2.5 increases the number of COVID-19 cases by 12% [62]
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